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US researchers say waiting for renewable energy technologies to reduce atmospheric greenhouse levels will take a long time and that carbon sequestration - storing carbon - could buy time in the short term.

A two day symposium to be held this week in California by the American Chemical Society will be told that carbon sequestration - storing carbon dioxide in the ocean, coal seams and underground fossil fuel reservoirs or converting it into rocks - could buy time while environmentally friendly sources of energy are developed.

Sequestering carbon would be one alternative to mandatory reductions in carbon dioxide, which US President George Bush last week dismissed when he announced that the United States would pull out of the Kyoto Agreement.

Director of the US Department of Energy's Office of Environmental Systems Mr David Beecy said novel approaches to carbon sequestration could turn carbon dioxide into carbonate rocks or even natural gas by mimicking natural geological and biological processes.

"It's early days but the potential payoff is undeniably large," he said.

One group of researchers from National Energy Technology Laboratory are using magnesium silicate ores and carbon dioxide to mimic the natural processes which create magnesium carbonate. What normally takes thousands of years has now been done in the laboratory in one hour.

Support remains for Kyoto

Meanwhile, other countries are yet to give up on the Kyoto Agreement and are still determined to reduce emissions, rather than try and tackle them once they have been created. Ministers from 32 Latin American and Caribbean countries have signed a declaration in Montreal, describing implementation of the Kyoto Agreement as their main priority.

Australian cabinet will this week consider the implications of the US withdrawal from the Kyoto Agreement. Agriculture Minister Warren Truss told ABC radio that he was concerned that greenhouse abatement measures would make some Australian industries more expensive, forcing them offshore to countries which had not signed the Agreement.

Federal Environment Minister Robert Hill is due to visit the US soon and is understood to have plans to tell Washington that Australia will continue with domestic efforts to curb greenhouse emissions.